Sony PlayStation 3 games may ship without codes that fix releases to specific geographical territories.

According to Sony Computer Entertainment Australia chief Michael Ephraim, the company sees the emergence of a global HDTV standard as the basis for dropping region-coding, in an interview with Australian IT.

"If you look at the fact that [the PS3] will support high-definition TV, which will be a global standard, there's a good likelihood that it will be global region, as for example we've done with the PSP," he said.

PlayStation and PS2 games are currently fixed to specific regions, much like DVDs are. A game bought in, say, the US will not play in a machine purchased in Europe, a least not without controversial and potentially illegal modification work on the console. The legality of the action depends in which country the change is made. ®